The First World War: Volume I: To Arms: 1 - Softcover

... provides the most comprehensive and perceptive explanation yet advanced of the war's causes ... Its exhaustive detail and multilingual bibliography make it invaluable as a reference tool alone. The author's original and insightful arguments and comparisons make it the most important comprehensive history of the war that has appeared in nearly seventy years. (War in History)

One of the most impressive books of modern history in a generation. (Max Hastings, London Evening Standard)

... a tremendous achievement, combining narrative lucidity with original interpretation. (David Horspool, Daily Telegraph)

For a work of such detailed and monumental scholarship, the book also remains readable and accessible ... Strachan's awesome knowledge of his subject illuminates rather than swamps his narrative. (Sunday Times)

A towering achievement. (Richard Holmes, The Guardian)

Magnificent...sumptuous in the energy, clarity, and breadth of its scholarship ... a masterpiece. (Los Angeles Times)

This is the first truly definitive history of the First World War, the war that has done most to shape the twentieth century. The first generation of its historians had access to only a limited range of sources, and their focus was primarily on military events. More recent approaches have embraced cultural, diplomatic, economic, and social history. In Hew Strachan's authoritative and readable history these fresh perspectives are incorporated with the military and strategic narrative. The result is an account that breaks the bounds of national preoccupations to become both global and comparative.

To Arms, the first of three volumes in this magisterial study, examines not only the causes of the war and its opening clashes on land and sea, but also the ideas that underpinned it, and the motivations of the people who supported it. It provides full and pioneering accounts of the war's finances, of the war in Africa, and of the Central Powers' bid to widen the war outside Europe.